Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 03 (19 page)

Hickey couldn’t stop his hands from lunging, grabbing the man’s neck, pressing his thumb against the windpipe. “Where do you come in?”

“Somebody tells Jack the snoop that’s cooking his goose lives in Tahoe. He phones me. I put him in touch with a couple of guys, is all.”

Hickey loosed the windpipe, turned his palm up against Foster’s chin, and shoved the man’s head back so hard it lifted him over the seat, landed him on the deck. “Where’d they take her?”

The old gangster curled his knees up, turned his face to the deck, and muttered something. Hickey stepped on his neck.

“Easy!” Foster wailed. “There’s a guy named Bishop, a banker likes to bet on the ponies. He’s got a cabin up here. I never been to it. Some lake. Petunia, Daisy, I don’t know.”

“Flower,” Hickey said.

“Yeah. Flower.”

“Thanks, Frankie.” The boss gunned the motor and hollered, “Tom and me each owe you one.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hickey got to the house first, by a hundred yards. He leaped to the deck, slammed the front door open, rushed in. Dodging furniture like a halfback, he dashed to the phone on the Formica table beside the couch where Claire lay napping.

As the two gamblers entered, Laura Foster was standing behind Mac a few yards back from the door. She wore her fur coat with the collar flipped up around her neck and her chin tucked against her chest, so her face was largely in shadow.

“Oh, God, Frankie!” she screeched. Her father looked as if he’d trudged miles through a hurricane. “What’d the rats do to you?”

“Don’t fuss about it. Let’s get outta here.” He leaned toward the door, then did a double take, stepped closer, and lifted her chin. “What happened to you?”

She had a dark shiner and a line of scratches down her cheek. Her hair had fallen out of the cone into spikes and tangles. “The bitch wouldn’t let up. Kept grilling me, like I was supposed to know something. I called her a couple names. She started clobbering me. Everybody around here’s got a screw loose.”

Harry looked at Mac. The cowboy nodded. “Miss Blackwood kinda flipped, boss. She’s a tiger.”

With a chuckle and a grin, Harry stared across the room to the corner near the fireplace. Claire had gotten up and knelt beside Hickey, who sat hunched with the phone receiver at his ear.

“Some dame.” Harry sighed.

Laura Foster clutched his sleeve. “What about it? You done playing games with us, so we can scram?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Run ’em home, Mac. First, though, on the way to the car, take Frankie around and introduce him to the boys. Then he can wonder which one’s going to plug him if he fed us a line.”

“Huh?” Laura squealed. “You snitched on Jack?”

“Shut up, honey.” Foster grasped her arm and tugged her toward the doorway while she lashed him with curses. The cowboy followed and shut the door.

Combing his hair with his fingers, Harry strolled across the room. He found the maid in the kitchen and told her to brew a pot of coffee and lace it hard. He walked past the fireplace, threw on a log, then tiptoed up behind Claire and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t of made you for a scrapper.”

“Sshh!” she commanded.

Hickey was barking into the phone. “Not a chance, sheriff. You wanta wait till dawn, that’s your business, only if she dies tonight, you and I are gonna be on the outs till eternity. Look, I’m going up there in about two seconds, and I’ll be driving like Mauri Rose.…Yeah, all right. I’ll meet you at the turnout by Watson Creek in a half hour.…Okay, forty minutes.”

Hickey dropped the receiver, leaned back, and exhaled deeply. He stood up and put his arms around Claire. “You can go home now, babe. It’s all over but the fireworks.”

“Don’t you want me to drive or something?”

“No,” Hickey said firmly. He gave her a kiss on the forehead and started for the door.

Beside the snake tank, Harry caught up. “Tom, I’d go with you or send some of the boys, only it’d be my neck if these guys that snatched her were connected with certain people. Know what I mean? You sticking me up, that’s one thing. Me going on a posse, that’s something different.”

“Sure. You got a business to run.”

“Yeah. You know the score. Now, how about you think of an excuse I can feed Miss Blackwood?”

“Excuse for what?”

“Why I’m jumping off here.”

“Tell her you offered to go along and I said get lost. Act like I broke your heart. That’ll melt her.”

The boss clapped Hickey on the shoulder blade. “You’re okay, Tom. Trigger-happy, but okay.”

Chapter Tweny-nine

Bud stood glowering at the cedar that had fallen across the road. In two hours of chopping, they’d cut a wedge about halfway through.

“Bastard’s petrified.”

If the tree hadn’t toppled, or if it’d waited an hour or been fifty feet up the road, beyond the cars, by now he and Tersh could be warm, dry, buzzed and smelling perfume.

He lifted the ax so ferociously it nearly tossed him over backward. He groaned. Snorted as he slammed the thing down. A few chips popped out of the wedge. He flung the ax and cussed while he peeled off his gloves, turned toward the firelight, and stared at his palms. Scowling viciously, he pointed to the left hand. “Look at this blister—like half a golf ball.” He kicked the ax handle and stomped past his partners. Flopped down on the log beside Tersh. “Your turn, Jackie.”

Meechum stayed crouched over the fire, resting his chin on his hands, until Tersh flung an elbow into his ribs. “Get with it, Jack. I’m not sitting on a bar stool by midnight, I turn into a werewolf.”

Meechum dragged himself up, staggered to the ax, and picked it up. He made a few weary chops, then rested, leaning on the ax handle.

“Say, Jack,” Tersh snapped. “You want a grave of your own, or should we dispose of you along with the girl?”

“Lay off. I’m getting blisters, same as you guys, and I gotta blow in Reno Tuesday. What’s with this damn tree? We’ve been bashing on it for a couple hours at least.”

“Keep bashing.”

“Maybe we oughta take a break and finish up with the girl. That way, anybody shows up, we got nothing to hide. Hell, after we ditch her and clean up the mess, we could snooze till morning, go up after that snowplow guy. He’s gotta have a chain saw, right?”

“Didn’t I just tell you, chump, we’re long gone by midnight or you’re doing time with the worms?”

“Yeah, I heard you. Anyway, I think we oughta take care of the girl. Her bein’ still up there gives me the creeps.”

Staring into the fire, Bud offered, “How about we burn her up? You ever see anybody get burned? I wonder what color the smoke is.”

“It’d stink up the whole basin,” Tersh said. “All we gotta do is stomp her a little, get all the air out, tie a couple rocks to her, and heave her in the lake.”

“Tie her with what?”

“With what? Rope, stupid.”

“Yeah, and some damned fish’ll make a meal outta the rope. A day or two, up she floats.”

“So what? By that time she’ll be a skeleton. It’d take Einstein to tell whether she’s the doll or some prehistoric squaw.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the freezing water’ll preserve her.”

“Aw, think about it, pal,” Meechum groaned. “If the water was freezing, the damned lake’d be frozen.”

“You better get chopping,” Tersh snarled, then turned to his partner. “What’s the big deal if they find her? What’s the difference? Either way, they ain’t about to catch up with me. Not unless they got agents in the French Foreign Legion.”

“Going to Africa, are you? You that scared of Tom Hickey?”

“North Africa’s the promised land, is why. Behind every other door’s an opium den. Maybe I’ll round up a harem. I got a few grand stashed away.”

“I don’t want her in the lake,” Meechum said. “We gotta dig a grave, deep where the wolves can’t smell her.”

Bud jumped up, made a turn around the fire, and grabbed Meechum by the collar. “You blow your brains out through the trombone, or what? A grave? By the time we move this damned log, we got hands like sausages. What do we dig with, smart guy?”

Chapter Thirty

At 9:53
p.m.
, Hickey pulled into the turnout beside Watson Creek. Both tires on the right side sank into mud. He left them embedded and sat stiffly behind the wheel, trying to breathe evenly, silence the fears that assaulted him, blot out the hideous vision that besieged him, of Wendy in death. She lay on her side with her head turned straight upward. She looked astounded. Her chest and her hair were soaked in blood. Her arms clutched her belly.

Hickey rolled down the window to let the heat out and the frost in. Sweat kept beading on his forehead. When he wiped his brow, his hand felt like a frozen block. He sat listening for tires and motors. Bounced his forehead off the steering wheel, cussing the miserable part of his brain that sought to prepare for the worst, that kept reminding him how often he’d suspected that Wendy couldn’t live much longer. How she belonged in heaven, if heaven existed; no matter, she wasn’t suited for the world. A hundred times in the past eight years he’d wondered if his calling wasn’t only to protect her for the little while until she finished her tour on earth. One hell of a job he was doing.

Several times he reached for the door handle or the starter button and had to suppress the urge to rush the cabin alone. It seemed he couldn’t wait another moment. His fingers burned. His feet threatened to leap out of his shoes.

Six minutes after ten, the sheriff’s cruiser rattled into the turnout and stopped beside him. The four doors of the cruiser sprang open at once. The muscle-bound Indian named Roy had been driving. Two more deputies climbed out of the rear. The three deputies and Sheriff Boggs gathered around Hickey. Roy carried a 30.06 with a telescopic sight. The others held lever-action Winchesters.

One deputy was the lanky son of Louis Pederson, a village shopkeeper. The boy had freckles that looked like splotches of oil. Beside him stood a deputy named Gene, who used to deal poker at Harry’s casino. He was tall as a flagpole, with hands that together could hide a basketball, or the decks he’d used to palm cards and deal seconds.

“What’ve you got in mind, Tom?” the sheriff asked.

“We’ve gotta walk in,” Hickey said. “The only way to do it is sneak up on the cabin.”

The sheriff glanced up at the trees. “Maybe we oughta drive a little way. The wind’s blowing off the mountain. I don’t guess they could hear us till we crested the hill and started down.”

“I’m not gonna risk it. We can get up there in twenty minutes or so hiking.”

“You know the layout?”

“I fished Flower Lake a couple times,” Hickey said. “There’s only the one cabin.”

Deputy Pederson offered, “What’s-his-name lives on this road, doesn’t he? The snowplow driver.”

“Lewellen,” the sheriff said. “His place is at the end of the road, about a quarter mile beyond the lake. Tom, you’re sure this crony of Harry’s wasn’t giving you the business?”

“Sure enough.”

“Okay, then, let’s shake a leg.”

Gene rummaged in his pocket for keys, walked to the cruiser’s trunk, and got out a small duffel bag and hoisted it over his shoulder. “I’m bringing some flares. Anybody want one?”

“What for?” Roy asked.

“You’d know if you hadn’t sat out the war playing your tom-tom. How else you gonna see the target, hold the flashlight in one hand, the rifle in the other? I don’t think we’re gonna need the snowshoes.”

“Bring ’em along,” the sheriff said. “And get out a Winchester and flashlight for Tom.”

Roy carried the snowshoes. They started two abreast up an icy dirt road confounded by sinkholes and rivulets, bordered in second-growth cedar and fir, each tree so close to its neighbor that the branches intertwined. The trunks were thick but short, twenty to thirty feet, just high enough to make the narrow road look like a tunnel into some treacherous cavern.

Hickey startled at every footfall. No matter how softly the men walked, and whether on dirt or snow, each step crunched, grating his senses and afflicting his spirit as though it had broken a mirror. At the quietest rustling in the underbrush—probably a squirrel—he wheeled and clapped the rifle butt to his shoulder. He pulled ahead of the others and still heard them panting. His heartbeat galloped. It sounded like restless fingers drumming.

At the crest of the hill, he ran off the road, through knee-deep snow in a stand of aspen to the edge of the dropoff and stood gazing down at Flower Lake.

Maybe six hundred yards long, half that wide, deep and murky, it looked like a black hole fringed in lace. In dead center rose an island of stacked, glacier-polished boulders. There were several piers, all but one in ruins. The good one lay on the opposite shore toward the far end. Behind it, the forest made way for a log cabin, the banker’s place.

Out from between Hickey’s teeth came a sound he’d never heard: a falsetto whimper. Wendy was there, he knew. Dead or alive. A light, so dim it might’ve been shed by a single candle, flickered against the pane of the window that overlooked the water. He peered at it while trying to swallow his heart.

A volley of sharp reports sounded. Hickey’s gut thought it was a gun, but his mind rebutted the idea.

Deputy Pederson marched up and stopped beside him. “Yessir. Somebody’s down there, all right.” He turned to meet the sheriff. “You hear? Somebody’s chopping logs.”

They rested for a minute before another volley sounded. Five whacks spaced seconds apart. Pederson gaped into the darkness. “Funny. The guy that’s chopping, he’s got a little bonfire and he ain’t nowhere near the cabin. He’s way down the heel, a little ways toward the cabin from the split where the road cuts up to Mister Lewellen’s place. Look real close, you can see the bonfire.”

“Probably run out of logs,” Boggs speculated. “Had to go out and find a dead tree. Tom, let’s get straight who’s running things. Is it you or me?”

Hickey gave up peering at the window. He turned to the sheriff and stared as though surprised to find him there, stuck his glasses back in their case, crammed it into his coat pocket. “You and Roy and Gene, see how near you can get to the woodcutter, then wait till you hear me fire a shot. That’ll be when I get to Wendy or run into trouble. The kid and I’ll slide down the hill, soon as it levels some, and cut around the topside of the lake. That oughta get us to the cabin about the same time you reach the woodcutter.”

“Sheriff, we supposed to take orders from him?” The Pederson kid asked.

“Might as well. I get the feeling Tom’s a lot better at giving orders than taking ’em.”

Hickey told Pederson to pass out the snowshoes. Each man accepted a pair, hung it by a rope loop from his shoulder, and started down the grade. About halfway, the clear swatch of a firebreak cut through the yellow pine straight down the hill from the road to the lake. Hickey and the boy turned that way, sidestepping. The path was treacherous in darkness so nearly pure, with jagged stumps and gnarled fingers of brush piercing out of the snow. Still, after a few dozen steps, Hickey found a rhythm. He might’ve reached the base of the hill in record time and on his feet if he hadn’t tried to gaze across the lake at the cabin window and missed spotting the rock that halted his front foot and sent him toppling head first. With old football instincts, he tucked and landed on his shoulder, the rifle pressed crossways against his stomach. Snowshoes flew up and clobbered the back of his head.

He skidded and plowed into the snow. When he tried to spring up, one leg folded and he toppled forward again. This time, he only rose to his knees, gazing around to regain his sense of direction. He couldn’t see the lake or cabin through the thicket of trees.

The boy caught up. He took Hickey’s arm, helped him to his feet, and returned his hat. “You okay?”

Hickey growled and pushed on. About twenty yards farther, they reached the base of the hill and what had once been a logging road that circled the lake behind the trees along the high-water line. Hickey peered between the trunks. The dim light still flickered in the cabin. He took out his glasses and stood a minute watching for movement. His heart and brain throbbed with longing for even a glimpse of Wendy. A chorus of wicked voices taunted him, proclaiming he’d find her dead.

A howl lodged in his throat. Suddenly frantic to know, and to mutilate every freak who’d harmed or grieved her, he wheeled and started trudging north around the top bend of the lake.

Along the old road, which must’ve caught daily sunlight, the snow gave way to dry patches and mud puddles. The speed he could’ve made got halved by the fallen logs he and the deputy had to dodge or climb over.

Though the forest was probably muting their noise, Hickey dreaded every slapping footstep or snapping twig. Often his feet planted themselves against his will. He couldn’t help but lean and stare between the trees at the cabin, holding perfectly still while listening for sounds that meant they’d gotten detected. Pederson took the lead.

Even when he’d reached the west side of the lake and lost any view of the cabin, Hickey stopped every few yards to listen. The last time, his body started quaking. For at least a minute, all he could do was press the Winchester across his middle, to keep the gun from dropping out of his hands, and lock his knees so they wouldn’t buckle. In forty-four years he’d never gotten a clue that fear could be this profound.

He was standing at the last bend in the road. The deputy was running back toward him. A few muted whacks sounded: the woodcutter again. Hickey managed two steps before the deputy reached him. He grabbed the boy’s arm. A handhold made standing far easier. At last he stopped quaking and gasped, “There’s no sense us going in together. One of us sticks to the road, the other takes the shoreline, sneaks around behind. There’s a back porch and steps going down.”

“Sure. I saw it. You sick or something?”

“I’ll take the road. You get to the bottom of the steps and wait. I bust through the front door, yelling like the devil. The first peep, you fly up the stairs, kick in the door, jump through the window, whatever you’ve got to.”

“Yessir.”

Hickey nodded and started up the road, planting his toes, then letting the heels fall gently to minimize the racket. He inspected every inch of the ground ahead and studied each sound. An ax bouncing off wood. A hissing noise, like a beginner attempting to whistle. The
whoosh
of a branch snapping back into place. Loosed clumps of snow falling off a tree and splattering. A rattle, like a pouch full of marbles. Feet padding on the crusty ground.

Hickey froze, stared up the hillside, and sensed the creature before he saw it: a small gray wolf skulking downhill. It made a leap onto the road and dashed across, rustling twigs as it wedged between two intertwined thickets. The boy yowled.